Would you believe the Los Angeles Angels are going to win the World Series this season? How about another title for the Boston Red Sox? Don't believe it? Take a look back at the past quarter century of champions and see for yourself.

The start of every new baseball season brings with it a flood of predictions. Pundits from coast to coast are offering up their best educated guesses—reading tea leaves, throwing darts, or some combination thereof—to figure out who is going to win the batting titles, Cy Young Awards, rookie of the year honors and, most importantly, the World Series.

While crystal balls and random guessing might work for some as the basis of their prognostications, at SportsData we decided to do some actual number-crunching as the foundation for this forecast. Specifically, we decided to look back at the most common traits of the past 25 World Series champions based on two important factors: player age and WAR.

The goal: Based on these factors, find out which 2012 teams most resemble the profile of the past 25 World Series champs.

The age factor is pretty straight-forward. However, many of you outside the close-knit sabermetric community might be asking yourself "what in the name of Derek Jeter is WAR?" Or alternatively: "WAR, what is it good for?"

WAR

The term WAR is a means of boiling down baseball player performance into one single metric. It's like throwing batting average, runs scored, ERA, home runs, RBIs, errors, etc., into a big vat and having it spit out one number to summarize a player's value.

You don't need to memorize a complicated formula to have a basic understanding of WAR. Simply put, WAR is short for "Wins Above Replacement," or the number of wins a player adds to his team over the course of a season when compared to a replacement-level player. By definition, a replacement player is considered a borderline major leaguer—the last guy on the big league roster or the first call-up from Class AAA.

There are two standard formulas for WAR. One is used by Fangraphs.com, the other is used by Baseball-Reference.com, and they vary slightly. Both have complicated formulas we won't bore you with here. For our purposes, we used the Baseball-Reference version of WAR.

Generally speaking, position players and starting pitchers can be classified using WAR with the following tiers:

0-1: borderline major leaguer

1-2: role player

2-3: solid starter

3-4: good player

4-5: All-Star player

5-6: Superstar

6+: MVP or Cy Young-caliber

Closers are a little different. The best closers each season tend to have a WAR between 3 and 4.

AGE

When defining age for the players on the past 25 championship teams, we used the age that a player was for the most days during his championship season. For example, if a player turned 29 by the All-Star break, he was given the age of 29. If he didn't turn 29 until August or September, he was considered 28 for that season.

We looked back at the ages and WARs of the past 25 World Series champions—from the 1986 New York Mets to the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals, and every team in between. (Remember, there was no World Series in 1994.)

For each of the past 25 World Series winners, we considered the players who started the most games at each position during the regular season. Please note that this was not necessarily a team's most common World Series lineup. It often was, but not always. In our data set, we used one player each at C, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS, DH (for AL teams), and closer. We also looked at the top three OFs and top four SPs. The starting pitchers were limited to four because in most cases teams did not use more than four starting pitchers during the postseason, and the fifth-starter spot often was a revolving door during the regular season.

THE DATA

What did we discover? First, some averages by position, based on the past 25 champions:

Catcher

Average age: 28.6

Average WAR: 1.9

First base

Average age: 29.1

Average WAR: 3.2

Second base

Average age: 27.9

Average WAR: 2.7

Third base

Average age: 30.1

Average WAR: 2.4

Shortstop

Average age: 27.9

Average WAR: 2.7

Outfield

Average age: 29.9

Average WAR: 2.7

Designated hitter

Average age: 33.4

Average WAR: 2.2

Starting pitcher

Average age: 29.6

Average WAR: 2.9

Closer

Average age: 29.8

Average WAR: 2.4

What we discovered about age

It pays to be a little older and perhaps a little more experienced than average. Go figure.

• The average age of a major league pitcher over the past 25 seasons is 28.5. The average age of a starting pitcher and closer on a World Series champion is just shy of 30.

• For hitters, the average age over the past 25 seasons is 28.8 while the average age of a hitter on a World Series champion skewed slightly higher at 29.4.

What we discovered about WAR

To nobody's surprise, starting pitching seems to be a big key. As a position, starting pitchers had the second-highest average WAR behind only first basemen. More than two-thirds of the past quarter century of World Series champs had at least one hurler of All-Star WAR (4.0+) in their rotation—the proverbial ace.

• 22 of the 25 teams (88 percent) had at least one SP with a WAR of at least4.0.

• 13 of the 25 teams (52 percent) had at least one SP with a WAR of at least5.0.

If your team doesn't have an ace, it's in trouble. Conversely, having an elite closer is nice, but not vital. Remember, the best closers each year have a WAR in the 3 to 4 range. Last season, only two full-time closers in the majors had a WAR above 3.0 (Mariano Rivera and Craig Kimbrel).

• Only six of the past 25 champs (24 percent) had a closer with a WAR of at least 3.0.

Looking at the best position players of the past 25 World Series champions, we discovered just about all of them had at least one All-Star-caliber player and nearly every champion in recent years has had a superstar-caliber (5.0+ WAR) player in its lineup.

4.0+ WAR

• 22 of the 25 champs had at least one hitter with a WAR of at least 4.0 (including nine first basemen).

• 16 of the 25 had at least two hitters with a WAR of at least 4.0.

• 9 of the 25 had three or more hitters with a WAR of at least 4.0.

5.0+ WAR

• 17 of the 25 had at least one hitter with a WAR of at least 5.0 (including 12 of the past 14 champions and the past six champions).

• 8 of the 25 had at least two hitters with a WAR of at least 5.0.

• 3 of the 25 had three or more hitters with a WAR of at least 5.0.

In terms of the most important positions at which to have a star player, first base led the pack by a wide margin with outfielders and middle infielders tied for second. The characteristics of the past 25 champions didn't often include star third basemen and rarely included star catchers or designated hitters.

THE 2012 CHAMPS

We took Sporting News' projections for the players who would play the most at each position this season, as well as the projected rotations of every MLB team. From that data set, we looked at this year's age of each player along with last year's WAR for each player to determine which teams most closely resemble the past 25 champions based on those characteristics.

The Red Sox and Angels look the most like the past 25 World Series champs. They are the only two 2012 teams that meet all four criteria we looked at: ages for pitchers and hitters and WARs for pitchers and hitters.

The age of both teams' lineups and rotations are within one year of the average age of hitters (29.4) and starting pitchers (29.6) of the past 25 champions. This year's Red Sox hitters average 30.4 years old and starting pitchers average 29.6 years old. This year's Angels hitters average 29.5 years old and starting pitchers average 30 years old.

The WARs for both teams meet the 2.9 threshold for pitchers and 2.5 criteria for hitters. Moreover, both teams have superstar-caliber first basemen among their multiple All-Star-level WAR position players.

• This year's Red Sox hitters had an average WAR of 3.5 last season.

• This year's Red Sox pitchers had an average WAR of 3.0 last season.

• This year's Angels hitters had an average WAR of 3.0 last season.

• This year's Angels pitchers had an average WAR of 3.8 last season.

The Tampa Bay Rays were the next closest team in our study. They meet the criteria for hitters' age and WAR and well as pitchers’ WAR, but they have an awfully young rotation (26.6) and are without a stud first baseman.

Naysayers (New York Yankees fans) undoubtedly will be quick to point out that using last year's WAR is not a good enough metric and that an average of the past two or three seasons’ worth of WARs might be more accurate. However, the most recent results tend to be the most accurate, and the problem of WARs for rookies or players from overseas become more problematic the more seasons you include.

While projecting player WARs for the season ahead would have been the most useful way of determining values for this year, good luck agreeing on a method of projecting WAR.

EXTRA INNING

This is just one study based on two metrics—albeit two pretty good ones (age and WAR). Some will argue that WAR is not the best way to gauge player value, but it is the only metric that includes offense, defense and pitching in one number and therefore allows for the cleanest value comparisons.

If nothing else, it is interesting to see how this season's teams stack up against history using real information, rather than an Ouija board and tarot cards.

Congratulations in advance to the Red Sox or Angels.

(SportsData LLC provides innovative sports statistics and content across the broad spectrum of technology platforms. For more information, visit www.sportsdatallc.com.)